Categoria: Idiomas

Spreading hate and proclaiming “God above all” is blasphemous

Leonardo BoffDeixe um comentário

I wish I did not have to write this article. But the acute current political crisis and abuse committed in God’s name, call on theology’s public function. As any other field, theology also has a social responsibility. There are times when the theologian must descend from his perch and say a few words in the political arena. That means denouncing abuses and announcing good actions, even though this role of a theologian can be misunderstood by some groups or viewed as partisan, which is not.

I am humbled to find myself following in the tradition of such prophetic Bishops as Dom Helder Camara, of Cardinals Dom Paulo Evaristo Arns (let’s remember, Brazil Never Again, the book that helped overthrow the dictatorship), and Dom Aloysio Lorscheider, Bishop Dom Waldir Calheiros, and others who in the dark days of the 1964 military dictatorship had the courage to raise their voices in defense of human rights, and against the disappearances and tortures carried out by agents of the State.

We are now living in a country torn by visceral hatreds, accusations by some against others, with the lowest kind of language and plenty of fake news, spread even by the highest authority of the country, the current President. That way he demonstrates the lack of composure in his high office and disastrous consequences of his interventions, as well as the absurdities he puts forth here in Brazil and abroad.

His campaign slogans were, and still are, “God above all” and “Brazil over everything”. We must denounce that use of the name of God. The second divine Commandment is clear: “Do not take the holy name of God in vain”. As it happens, invoking the name of God in this manner is not only abusive, but it represents a true blasphemy. Why?

Because is not possible to link God to hatred, to the praise of torture, torturers and threats against his opponents the way Bolsonaro and his children do. In the sacred Judaic-Christian texts God reveals the divine nature as “love” and “mercy”. “Bolsonarism” includes a policy of confronting the opposition, not by engaging in dialogue with Congress, but where politics is understood as conflict, of the fascist type. This has nothing to do with God-love and God-mercy. Consequently it spreads and legitimates, from above, a true culture of violence, one that allows each citizen to posses up to four weapons. A weapon is not a kindergarten toy, but an instrument to kill or to defend oneself by mutilating or killing the other.

He considers himself religious, but his is a spiteful religiosity; his religiosity appears bereft of sacredness and reveals a perturbing lack of spirituality, or sense of commitment, either to human life or to nature’s other creatures, especially those who have less. Pope Francis often says, rightly, that he prefers an ethical atheist of good will to a Christian hypocrite who neither has love or empathy for the other, nor cultivates human values.

I quote from a text by one of the greatest theologians of the last century, who at the end of his life, was named a Cardinal, the French Jesuit Henri De Lubac:

«If I lack love or justice I inevitably move away from You, my God, and my cult is nothing more than idolatry. To believe in You I must believe in love and justice. It is a thousand times more valuable to believe in love and justice than to pronounce Your name. It is impossible for me to find You if I am divorced from love and justice. Those who take love and justice as their guide are on the path that leads them to You» (Sur les chemins de Dieu, Aubier 1956, p.125).

Bolsonaro, his clan and followers (but not all of them) are neither guided by love nor appreciative of justice. This is why they are divorced from the “milieu divin” (Teilhard de Chardin) and their path does not lead them to God. There are neo-Pentecostal pastors who see Bolsonaro as God-sent, but that changes nothing about the attitude of the President, who, to the contrary, amplifies ever more the offense to the holy name of God, especially when they hang a pornographic internet youtube against the Carnival.

What kind of God takes away the rights of the poor and grants privileges to the wealthy classes, what God humiliates the elderly, degrades women and despises peasants, depriving them of the hope of having a pension in old age?

The Social Security project creates profound social inequalities, and yet they have the nerve to say that is creating equality. Inequality is a neutral analytic concept. Ethically it means social injustice. Theologically, inequality is a social sin that negates God’s design of gathering all in a great fraternal fellowship.

French economist Thomas Piketty, famous for his book, Capital in the Twenty First Century, (El Capital en el siglo XXI, FCE 2014), also penned an entire book about The Economics of Inequality, (La economía de las desigualdades, Siglo veintiuno, 2015). According to Piketty, the simple fact that the 1% who are multi-billionaires control a great part of the income of the people of the world, and in Brazil, according to Marcio Pochmann, a specialist on the subject, the six main billionaires have the same wealth as the 100 million poorest Brazilians (JB 25/9/2017), reveals our social injustice.

Our hope is that Brazil is bigger than the reigning irrationality and that we will emerge better from the present crisis.

Leonardo BoffEco-Theologian-Philosopher Earthcharter Commissioner

Free translation from the Spanish sent by
Melina Alfaro, alfaro_melina@yahoo.com.ar.
Done at REFUGIO DEL RIO GRANDE, Texas, EE.UU.

Why won’t the official Catholic Church discuss sexuality and the law of celibacy?

Leonardo Boff4 Comentários

Pope Francis was undeniably courageous in openly confronting the issue of pedophilia within the Catholic Church. He encourages reporting pedophiles, (priests, religious, bishops and cardinals) to the civil authorities for prosecution and punishment. In the Roman encounter for the Protection of Minors, in late February 2019, the Pope imposed 8 Determinations, among which were “zero pedophilia” and “protection of the victims of abuse”.

Pope Francis identifies the root of the problem as “the scourge of clericalism, which is fertile ground for all these abominations”. Clericalism here means the concentration of all sacred power in the clergy, to the exclusion of other levels that are considered to be above all suspicion or criticism. As it happens, some clergymen use that power, that in itself ought to irradiate trust and reverence, to sexually abuse minors.

However, in my opinion, the present Pope and his predecessors, for reasons that I will try to clarify, have not dealt adequately with the issues of sexuality and the law of celibacy.

As to sexuality, we must recognize that the Church, the-great-pyramidal-institution, has historically held a distrustful and extremely negative attitude towards sexuality. The Church is hostage to an erroneous understanding that derives from the Platonic and Augustinian traditions. Saint Augustine saw the sexual act as the path through which original sinenters. Through it, from birth, each human being supposedly carries the stain of a sin, regardless of personal responsibility, in solidarity with the sin of the original parents.

With less procreative sex, there are fewer “massa damnata” (condemned masses). The woman, who bears the off-spring, is responsible for bringing original sin into the world. This is why the woman is denied full humanity. She is called “mas” which in Latin means “incomplete man”. Herein lies the theoretical grounding of the anti-feminism and machismo in the Roman Catholic Church.

Hence the high value placed on celibacy, because without sexual-genital relations with a woman, no children will be born. Thus, the original sin will not be transmitted.

In the analyses and condemnations that surround pedophilia, the basic problem has yet to be discussed: sexuality. A human being is not defined by gender. In body and soul the human being is sexualized. It is so essential that the continuity of life passes through it. But this is a mysterious and extremely complex reality.

The French thinker, Paul Ricoeur, who philosophically reflected on Freud’s psychoanalytic theory, wrote: “deep down, sexuality remains perhaps impermeable to reflection and inaccessible to human dominance; perhaps that capacity means that sexuality cannot be reduced to an ethics or a technique” (Revista Paz y Tierra n. 5,1979, p. 36). Sexuality lives between the law of the day, where established behaviors prevail, and the law of the night where free impulses function. Only an ethics of respect towards the other sex and permanent self control of that volcanic energy can transform sexuality into an expression of affection and love, rather than an obsession.

We know that insufficient preparation is given in the seminaries to priests for integrating sexuality. Normal contacts with women are so circumscribed that it results in a certain atrophy in the development of their identity. Why did God create humanity as man and woman? (Gn 1,27). It was not primarily for procreation, but so that men and women would not be alone, so that they would be compañeros. (Gn 2,18).

The sciences of the psyche show that a man only matures under the gaze of the woman, and a woman, under the gaze of the man. Man and woman are complete but reciprocal, and they mutually enrich each other through their differences.

Cellular genetics shows that the difference in chromosomes between man and woman is limited only to one chromosome. The woman possesses two XX chromosomes and the man has one X and one Y chromosome. Hence one can deduce that the basic sex is the feminine (XX), with the masculine (XY) being a differentiation of the feminine. Consequently there is no absolute sex, only a dominant one. “A second sex” exists in each human being, man and woman. Human and sexual maturity. lies in the integration of the “anima” and the “animus”, namely, of the feminine and masculine dimensions present in each person.

Celibacy is not excluded from this process. It can be a legitimate option, but in the Catholic Church it is imposed as a condition for becoming a priest or a religious. On the other hand, celibacy cannot be born of an inability to love, but from a super abundance of love of God, that is transferred to others, especially to those most lacking for affection.

Why doesn’t the Roman Catholic Church abolish the law of celibacy? It would be contradictory with her structure. The Catholic Church is, socially, a totally authoritarian, patriarchal, machista and hierarchical institution. A Church structured around the sacred power encounter what C. G. Jung denounced: “where power predominates, there is neither love nor tenderness”. That is what occurs, in part, with machismo and rigidity in the Church. To correct this deviation, Pope Francis tirelessly preaches “the tender and affectionate encounter”. Celibacy exists in function of the isolated and solitary clerical Church.

If this type of Church prevails, we should not expect abolition of the law of celibacy. That law is useful for that type of Church, but not for the faithful.

And where is Jesus of Nazareth’s dream of a fraternal and egalitarian community? If His dream were to be fulfilled, everything would have to change in the Roman Catholic Church.

Leonardo Boff Eco-Theologian-Philosopher,Earthcharter Commission

Free translation from the Spanish sent by
Melina Alfaro, alfaro_melina@yahoo.com.ar.
Done at REFUGIO DEL RIO GRANDE, Texas, EE.UU.

Carnival: celebrating the joy of living

Leonardo BoffDeixe um comentário

Brazil is experiencing one of the saddest, if not macabre, phases of her history. The oligarchies’ corruption has been exposed, corruption which has been present throughout our history as a patriarchal (colonial, elitist, anti-popular, and slave holding) state, which by dominating and manipulating public opinion, for centuries has kept the people from being, owning, and knowing. Corruption was not almost exclusively limited to the Labor Party, (PT), as has been claimed in recent years. To the contrary, it always existed. And while it is true that some leading PT members were corrupt, it was scapegoated to mask the massive corruption of the privileged.

A new mantra (“hunt down the schemers”) was peddled by the “mythical one” (Jair Bolsonaro) who was supposed to eliminate corruption. Fifty days in office sufficed to reveal the corruption in his own crowd, even his own family. Many naively believed in the profusion of fake news and slogans with a Nazi slant: “Brazil above everything” (Deutchland über alles) and “God above everyone.” Which God? The God of the neo-Pentecostals, who promote material prosperity but are deaf to the nefarious social injustice that bestows lots of money on their Pastors, true wolves who shear their sheep? It is not the God of Jesus of Nazareth, the poor man and friend of the poor, of whom Fernando Pessoa said that “He did not understand anything about accounting and there is no record that He had a library”. He was a poor man who wandered everywhere, announcing, as the Gospels put it, “great joy for all the people”.

This is the sinister environment in which Carnival is celebrated. It could not be otherwise, because Carnival is one of the most important events in the lives of millions of Brazilians. The festivities help them forget the deceptions, and give room to much suppressed anger, (like of the thousands who screamed obscenities in São Paulo: “B…. go get f…d”). The festival temporarily suspends the terrible daily life and tedious passage of time. It is as if, for a moment, we are all participating in eternity, because during the festivities the passage of time seems suspended. Excess is inherent in the festival, as is the breaking of conventional norms and social formalities. Logically, everything that is healthy can become infirm, like the orgiastic character of some aspects of the Carnival. But that is not characteristic of the Carnival.

The festival is a phenomenon of richness. Richness here does not mean having money. The richness of the festival is that of cordial reason, of joy, of realizing the dream of boundless fraternity, people of the favelas with people of the organized city, all disguised: children, youth, adults, men and women and the elderly, dancing, singing, eating and drinking together. The festival is a manifestation of the fact that we can be happy and joyful, even if we are living collective hardships.

Thinking of it, the joy of Carnival is an expression of a love that is more than empathy. The one who loves nothing or no one, cannot be joyful, even if in his anguish he yearns for that. Saint John Chrysostom, a theologian of the Orthodox Church, of the V Century of the Christian era, (of whom Cardinal Paulo Evaristo Arns was a great enthusiast and devout reader) expressed it well: “ubi caritas gaudet, ibi est festivitas”: “Where love is joyful, there is the festival”.

And now some reflection: the theme of the festival appears as a phenomenon that has defied great thinkers, such as R. Caillois, J. Pieper, H. Cox, J. Moltmann and the very F. Nietzsche himself. It happens that the festival evokes what is still childish and mythic in us, even given our maturity, and the primacy of the cold instrumental-analytic reason that rules our society.

The festival reconciles everything and brings out nostalgia for the paradise of delights that was never totally lost. With reason Plato would say: “the gods made the festivals so that we could breathe a little.” The festival is not just a day made by men but also “a day the Lord has made”, as Psalm 117.24 says. In effect, if life is a difficult path, we need the festival some times to catch our breaths, and once renewed, to forge ahead with joy in our hearts.

Whence springs the joy of the festival? Nietszche formulated it best: “to find joy in one thing, all things must be welcomed.” Consequently, to be able to truly celebrate festival, we must affirm the positive nature of all things. “If we can say yes to a single moment then we have said yes not only to ourselves but to the totality of existence” (Der Wille zur Macht, book IV: Zucht und Züchtigung n.102).

This yes underlies our daily decisions, at work, in our concern for our families and for the jobs threatened by the new regressive laws of the current government, and the time spent with friends and colleagues. Festival is a powerful time, when the secret meaning of life is experienced, even unconsciously. We emerge stronger from the festival, stronger to face the demands of life, which is largely filled with struggle and great difficulties.

We have good reason to celebrate during this Carnival of 2019. Let’s forget for a moment the unpleasantness of a government still lacking direction, with ministers who embarrass us and politicians who attend more to the groups who funded them than the true interests of the people. In spite of all that sadness, joy must prevail.

Leonardo Boff Eco-Theologian-Philosopher,Earthcharter Commission

Free translation from the Spanish sent by
Melina Alfaro, alfaro_melina@yahoo.com.ar.
Done at REFUGIO DEL RIO GRANDE, Texas, EE.UU.

The current socio-political crisis demands prophets

Leonardo BoffDeixe um comentário

 

“The poor tell us who we are. The prophets tell us who we could be.
So we hide the poor and kill the prophets.” wrote the US Prophet Philip Berrigan
(Jonah House).

Prophetizing is not just a Biblical phenomenon. It also exists in other religions, as in Egypt, Mesopotamia, Mari and Canaan. It exists in all times, including our own. Several kinds of prophets (prophetic communities, visionaries, cult prophets, prophets of the court, etc.) will not be discussed here. The prophets of the First Testament, (also called the Old Testament), such as Hosea, Amos, Micah, Jeremiah and Isaiah, were classics. They were sensitive to the social issues.
To tell the truth, the prophetic spirit has always been present in all phases of Christianity. This is undeniably the case among us, to mention only Brazil, with Dom Helder Camara, Cardinal Dom Paulo Evaristo Arns, Dom Pedro Casaldaliga, and others.

A prophet is an indignant person who struggles for right and justice, especially on behalf of the poor, the weak and widows, against those who exploit the peasants, who falsify weights and measures; and against the luxury of the royal palaces. They sense the call within themselves, interpreted in Biblical code as a divine mission. Amos, who was a simple herdsman, Micah, a small farmer, and Hosea, married to a prostitute, left their daily tasks and went to the backyard of the temple or in front of the royal palace to make their denunciations. But they did not only denounce. They announced catastrophes and then, they announced a new hope, a new and better beginning.

Prophets are mindful of national and international historical events. Micah, for instance, reprimands Nineveh, the capital of the Assyrian empire: “Woe to the bloody city, everything within her is a lie. She is filled with robbery, and does not cease sacking. I will launch filth upon you” (3,1.6). Jeremiah calls Babylon “the metropolis of terror”.

We must understand the premonitions of the prophets correctly. They do not predict catastrophes, as if they had access to a special knowledge. Rather, the meaning is: if the present situation persists, with no change in the exploitation, the practices against the helpless and the absence of a reverent relationship towards Jehovah, something horrible will happen.

Logically, prophets are not pleasing to the powerful, the kings, or even the people. They are called “disrupters of order”, “conspirators against the court and the king”. For that reason, prophets are persecuted, as was Jeremiah, who was tortured and jailed; others were murdered. Very few prophets have died of old age, but no one can make them to shut up.

There clearly are false prophets, those who frequent the courts and are friends with the rich. They announce only pleasing things and even get paid for doing so. There is a true contradiction between false and true prophets. A sign that a prophet is a true one is the courage to risk life and limb for the cause of the humble, and the Earth, one who is always crying for justice and for the right, and tirelessly stands for what is right and just.

Prophets emerge in times of crisis, to denounce illusory projects and to announce a path that brings justice for the humiliated, and that creates a society pleasing to God because the offended and the invisible are well cared for. Justice and right are the bases of lasting peace: that is the central message of the prophets.

We are living now a grave crisis on both a national and world level. Gatherings of scientists and analysts of Earth’s status warn us that if the logic of boundless accumulation continues we will cause a grave ecological-social catastrophe. We are not headed towards global warming. We already are living it. The signs are undeniable.

These voices, even the most authoritative ones, are heard neither by the “decision makers” nor by the men with money. In our country, now submerged in an unprecedented crisis, chaotically ruled by incompetent and even ridiculous persons, we lack prophets who denounce and point to viable paths to get us out of this mess.

The words of Marcio Pochmann are in the prophetic line: “If is maintained the neoliberalism path opened by Temer and now deepened by the ultra-liberalism that dominates the confused government of Bolsonaro, the evolution of Brazil will tend to be like that of Greece, with enterprises failing, and public administration breaking down. The worst is rapidly coming”. Others go even farther: “if socio-political reforms are imposed, according to the logic of the market, merely competitive and not cooperative, Brazil could be transformed into a nation of pariahs”. We need religious and civil prophets, men and women who at least have prophetic attitudes, to denounce that the path underway will be catastrophic.

Isaiah’s words are on point: “The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light: they that dwell in the land of the shadow of death, upon them hath the light shone” (9,1-2).

Leonardo BoffEco-Theologian-Philosopher and of  the Earthcharter Commission

Free translation from the Spanish sent by
Melina Alfaro, alfaro_melina@yahoo.com.ar.
Done at REFUGIO DEL RIO GRANDE, Texas, EE.UU